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Create a Live Timing Point Online With RDGO

Modified on: Thu, 8 Sep, 2016 at 2:47 PM

Race Director GO has a feature that allows timers to set up a live link that will be updated automatically from a computer running The Race Director’s Announcer function. This computer should have the most recent participant database downloaded and synced with RunSignUp, and a live internet connection.

Getting Started

First (as with any RD|GO feature) you should make sure that you have the most up-to-date version of The Race Director software running on each computer that you plan on creating a Live Timing Point for. You can do this by going to File > Download Update.

Next you’ll need to make sure that your race has it’s Partner Integration setup correctly with RunSignUp. You can learn how to do so here.

Timing Point Setup

The next section that you need to set up in The Race Director is to define your Timing Points. As a reminder, Timing Points are areas that you are collecting reads continuously throughout a race, not individual timing boxes, laps, or segments of a race. You do not need to setup a Timing Point for the Start of any race, each race automatically has the capability to collect start reads without adding an additional timing point.

Once you have your Timing Points setup you’ll need to click the RSU Sync button in your Timing Points dialog.

This will activate RunSignUp, but you’ll still need to start up The Race Director’s announcer window and map it to the Timing Point that you would like to broadcast live.

Announcer Window Setup

In order to send results data to the RD|GO Live Timing Point, you will need to start up the Announcer Window found in Reports > Announcer. Then you’ll need to select the Options button and check the “Stream to Race Director Go” box. After that you’ll need to select which timing point this computer is connected to and will be broadcasting.

When you select a timing point Race Director will give you a link to the Live Timing Point

Announcer Window hosted at RunSignUp. If you right-click the link it will copy the URL so you can paste it into your browser, or email it to the public if you would like. This link can then be loaded on any device with a web browser and internet connection.

By clicking the gear icon on the upper right hand corner, you can edit these settings for the window.

Note: if you plan on using a big screen TV or projector to display this, we recommend using a larger font size, and clicking F11 in your browser to make the tab full screen.

If at any point you need to reload your passings into the announcer you can reset the data by clicking the “Reset Data” button next to the Timing Point dropdown.

Connection to Chip System

In order to load times into this system, you’ll need to connect your announcer window to a chip system. These settings are found by clicking the “Options” button found in the Announcer Window.

First, check the “Use Connection to Chip System” box, then select whether this screen is being connected to a finish Timing Point, or an Announcer Timing Point (anything other than finish). You can chose to have the screen show multiple reads (useful for triathlons where you may have multiple occurrences at a single Timing Point) or if you would like to Auto Save your results to a text file.

The most crucial setting is to set the TCP-IP port that your chip system is sending reads to. Check with your chip system’s manufacturer if you do not know what this value should be set to.